Mike Farber is a partner in Van Ness Feldman's litigation and investigations practice. Drawing on nearly thirty years split between private practice and government service—at the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of the Interior—he leads teams on investigation and compliance matters across the energy, utility, and industrial sectors. That combination gives him a working knowledge of investigations from both sides of the table, allowing him to identify compliance problems quickly and resolve them before they grow, usually with a lean team rather than a large one.
Mike leads internal investigations, advises on regulatory strategy, and runs compliance reviews and regulatory due diligence for energy, utility, and industrial companies. Increasingly, this work sits at the front end of a transaction, not just its aftermath. His reviews have covered emissions standards, vehicle onboard diagnostics, energy program compliance, cybersecurity incidents, electricity transmission, bid-rigging, and fraud. He also advises on national security matters involving cyber and physical threats to energy infrastructure and has served as a testifying expert in federal litigation on the decommissioning of offshore oil and gas facilities.
Mike is also shaping how Van Ness Feldman's practices deploy artificial intelligence, with the goal of moving faster without losing rigor. He has built a set of custom AI tools for investigations and compliance work, including one that reverse-engineers what went wrong in a compliance program by working backward from government charging documents. He is currently running a structured comparison of leading AI platforms on live energy matters, aiming to turn around large-scale regulatory and compliance reviews on compressed timelines, whether the work involves an internal investigation, a compliance assessment, or regulatory due diligence.
Before joining Van Ness Feldman, Mike spent six years as Senior Advisor to the Director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) at the Department of the Interior. He joined shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster and was involved in nearly every major enforcement and investigative matter BSEE handled during its formative first five years, while leading the reform of federal oversight of offshore oil and gas operations.